Microsoft has sternly declined to enter the handheld gaming market, and insists it isn't changing it's mind any time soon. And that may be true... for the Xbox division. But with MS smartphones doubling in number every year, with better mobile processors, higher-bandwidth cellular, and wider-range WAN technology coming out all the time, I see them pouncing on the handheld market like a starving hyena in 2-3 years.
They're already hinting at integration between smartphones and Xbox Live, allowing cross-communication with buddies who are online on Live, and possible viewing of stats and "downloadable game content". This is where it starts - the day Xbox Live Mobile debuts is the day Sony and Nintendo had better tighten their grips on the handheld market.
They start by offering Xbox Live Mobile services for cellphones and smartphones. This starts with communication link-ups, stats viewing, maybe trailer downloads. They start offering downloadable games you can buy with points from your existing account. Then mobile games start featuring Achievements which affect your Live Gamerscore. Players start seeing games that offer interaction between the version for their Xbox and the version for their phone.
Then, that's when the unthinkable happens: Microsoft releases a new hardware unit, seeking the same glory Ngage failed to achieve, an all-in-one cell phone/smartphone/handheld gaming console. Actually, I'd bet good money it'll be an MP3 player, too - and probably a camera (maybe an option, like the regular and deluxe 360 packages?). I see games being purchased solely through direct-download - possibly a retail push with a flash-based format, like the SD-based Nintendo DS.
Personally, I still love my GameBoy Advance SP, and I've not yet been impressed enough with the Xbox 360 or the PSP to buy one. But, given a handheld offering from MS, I might have to give it a spin.
Showing posts with label speculation. Show all posts
Showing posts with label speculation. Show all posts
2006-10-23
2006-10-22
Hey Larry and Sergei!
I hope somebody's listening, because Google has some glaring gaps in their coverage.
First and foremost in my mind, they need a download service, something like C|Net's Download.com. I'm shocked that this has yet to happen. It's got to happen sooner or later. I just hope it's sooner.
They need to add Google Docs & Spreadsheets to Google Apps for Your Domain. I've got Apps FYD, and while it works well, it's, well, it's not much - it's Gmail, Gtalk and a WYSIWYG page editor. That's it. I expect more from them out of an offering like this. I also thoroughly expect this to come out in an appliance like the GSA. I think such a product would do really well.
For some reason Hello is still a seperate program from Gtalk. They've got to fix that. Scrap it and integrate Picassa into Gtalk to send images that way.
They've got to have a truly wicked project and source management system - any chance we might see this opened up for use by open-source projects? They could probably knock the wind out of Sourceforge. Sourceforge is a good site, but it's not the best user experience in the world.
They're now vaguely tracking music listening habits via Gtalk to Google Trends. This is silly. Especially since they have a video property and no music property. They need to get off their asses and snap up Last.fm, or just fork the project (it's open-source, after all). Build the Scrobbler into Gtalk and/or GDS, merge the Last.fm database into Trends, and combine your Last.fm profile with your Google profile. I know they don't typically take on competitors head-on, but this gives them a handy way to take the scenic route to a fight with iTunes, and in a good way - in a way that would let Google truly ambush Apple, particularly if Google is able to swing a deal offering DRM-free content that could be put on any player, not just specific players. I'm not naive enough to expect Google to go into commodity hardware sales.
If they're going to push the whole Sitemaps thing, they should have Blogger and Google Page Creator automatically generate Sitemaps and automatically submit them to Google. Google Webmaster Tools and Google Analytics should both be tied directly into the admin panel for Apps FYD. AdSense and AdWords can be tied into it too for those using AdSense and/or AdWords with their GAFYD site.
I'm amazed we haven't seen an official virtual disk service from Big G yet. Many people are using what's now nearing 3G of space on a Gmail account as disk space, and various tools have been created to facilitate such use. But wouldn't it be better if they just made something for that purpose? Tie the client into GDS? Use it for storage, file sharing, backups, transfering files between work and home... Oh, the possibilities.
And, last but not least, I have to gripe about the quality of Google Page Creator. It's lousy. It's buggy, and it doesn't give you nearly enough flexibility to make a decent site. And on top of it all, it's deathly slow during pretty much all operations. I'm hoping they improve it fast, otherwise I'm going to have to ditch it.
First and foremost in my mind, they need a download service, something like C|Net's Download.com. I'm shocked that this has yet to happen. It's got to happen sooner or later. I just hope it's sooner.
They need to add Google Docs & Spreadsheets to Google Apps for Your Domain. I've got Apps FYD, and while it works well, it's, well, it's not much - it's Gmail, Gtalk and a WYSIWYG page editor. That's it. I expect more from them out of an offering like this. I also thoroughly expect this to come out in an appliance like the GSA. I think such a product would do really well.
For some reason Hello is still a seperate program from Gtalk. They've got to fix that. Scrap it and integrate Picassa into Gtalk to send images that way.
They've got to have a truly wicked project and source management system - any chance we might see this opened up for use by open-source projects? They could probably knock the wind out of Sourceforge. Sourceforge is a good site, but it's not the best user experience in the world.
They're now vaguely tracking music listening habits via Gtalk to Google Trends. This is silly. Especially since they have a video property and no music property. They need to get off their asses and snap up Last.fm, or just fork the project (it's open-source, after all). Build the Scrobbler into Gtalk and/or GDS, merge the Last.fm database into Trends, and combine your Last.fm profile with your Google profile. I know they don't typically take on competitors head-on, but this gives them a handy way to take the scenic route to a fight with iTunes, and in a good way - in a way that would let Google truly ambush Apple, particularly if Google is able to swing a deal offering DRM-free content that could be put on any player, not just specific players. I'm not naive enough to expect Google to go into commodity hardware sales.
If they're going to push the whole Sitemaps thing, they should have Blogger and Google Page Creator automatically generate Sitemaps and automatically submit them to Google. Google Webmaster Tools and Google Analytics should both be tied directly into the admin panel for Apps FYD. AdSense and AdWords can be tied into it too for those using AdSense and/or AdWords with their GAFYD site.
I'm amazed we haven't seen an official virtual disk service from Big G yet. Many people are using what's now nearing 3G of space on a Gmail account as disk space, and various tools have been created to facilitate such use. But wouldn't it be better if they just made something for that purpose? Tie the client into GDS? Use it for storage, file sharing, backups, transfering files between work and home... Oh, the possibilities.
And, last but not least, I have to gripe about the quality of Google Page Creator. It's lousy. It's buggy, and it doesn't give you nearly enough flexibility to make a decent site. And on top of it all, it's deathly slow during pretty much all operations. I'm hoping they improve it fast, otherwise I'm going to have to ditch it.
2006-10-19
Getting Google-Eyed
Okay, I'm a regular reader of Ars Technica, which is a regular poster of Google news. Every time Google makes some nifty new toy, Ars posts about it.
So, when I look at the tiny toolbar in the top-left corner of my Gmail and Google Calendar pages and notice two new links, I'm intrigued. So, what do I do? I sign up for both Google Docs & Spreadsheets, and Picasa Web Albums.
I started with Docs & Spreadsheets, and I'd have to describe it as "not bad". It's still in beta (isn't everything?), and it shows. There are serious inconsistencies with the interface, and I experienced one point when the application said my connection had been lost, and along with it, my changes - oddly, I didn't actually lose any changes, but regardless, that's not a good sign. I wouldn't use it for anything work-related honestly, but I will say it makes a decent home word processor and spreadsheet suite. I like the collaboration and sharing tools; they're simple but effective. Revision control is a very nice feature as well; being a developer and used to using revision control when programming, I'm glad to see it catching on in other areas.
I uploaded some files by email, both in the body of the email (which works very smoothly, but takes a while to process), and as attachments (takes an extremely long time to process, and I ran into some problems, which I was able to resolve by searching the Google Group dedicated to the application.) I also tried editing and creating new documents through the web interface. I uploaded spreadsheets and text documents by email and by upload form, and created a new one of each via the web interface. Everything worked well, but there are some inconsistencies between the two applications (such as the way documents are renamed), and the interface for Spreadsheets can be irritating, as you have to switch between tabs to switch between formatting and data entry/formula editing. I don't know how many spreadsheet functions it supports, but probably not many - this might present some difficulties when importing more complex spreadsheets, so I wouldn't recommend it.
On the whole, however, it is an application I will continue to use for my personal use going forward, and for some documents I need to collaborate on for work purposes, that aren't mission-critical or highly confidential.
On to Picasa Web Albums. This works extremely well. There are a couple of minor bugs with the (again, beta) Picassa 2 software with the Web Albums upgrade. I already had and have used Picassa 2, but I had to download and install the new version seperately (no auto-update as Gtalk has.) There are some minor glitches with the upgrade that are unrelated to the web album feature - UI glitches with scrolling, for example - but the web album works quite well. You select your photos, click a button, give the album a title and description, and it resizes and uploads the photos to your free 250M of storage. For $25 per year you can upgrade to 6G of storage, plus the ability to post video.
You can re-caption, re-name, and reorganize photos via the web interface, and you can add to existing albums from within Picasa. The web page also gives convenient links to email your friends from your Gmail account, and the links are fairly easy to remember (it's basically your Gmail address). It also accepts uploads from Apple's iPhoto.
This is something I will definitely be using going forward, because I share a lot of photos to keep in touch with friends and family across the country. I would recommend it as a photo-sharing service, but it is not a social networking site; you are only intended to find someone's web album if they tell you about it. They do, however, offer methods of embedding your photo feed into your blog or (shudder) MySpace page.
Now, this got me thinking on everybody's favorite debate: What's next for Google? Well, they just announced they want to slow down on new product development, and spend more time refining their existing offerings and integrating them together. This is what Google Docs & Spreadsheets is about, and we're going to see more of that. Web albums was a simple matter of leveraging their existing technologies; we're going to see more of that, too.
I also see a few holes in their big push areas. They've got many-to-many text (Google Groups), one-to-one text (Gmail), live one-to-one text (Gtalk), one-to-many text (Blogger), and live one-to-one audio (Gtalk Voice Chat). I see live many-to-many text (chatrooms built onto Gtalk), live many-to-many audio (Gtalk conference calls), and possibly live one-to-one video (Gtalk video chat) on the horizon, easily. The reason I say possibly on one-to-one video as it's still not hugely popular, and it still doesn't work very well. However, Google is known for changing those traits in everything they touch, so they may be able to pull something out of their PhD-lined hat.
That's everybody's communications. They're also taking care of everybody's media, with Google Video and a recent YouTube acquisition, and of course Picasa and the new Web albums. What's missing is, of course, audio. I see an appeal to independent artists, and possibly another grab of public domain material (like their recent indexing of all books whose copyright had expired). I can definitely see an acquisition in this space, and I particularly like the idea of Last.fm coming under Google's wing. I think it'd be a really good matchup, and I think it'd do great things for both companies. But, of course, this is all conjecture - only time will tell what Big G has planned.
So, when I look at the tiny toolbar in the top-left corner of my Gmail and Google Calendar pages and notice two new links, I'm intrigued. So, what do I do? I sign up for both Google Docs & Spreadsheets, and Picasa Web Albums.
I started with Docs & Spreadsheets, and I'd have to describe it as "not bad". It's still in beta (isn't everything?), and it shows. There are serious inconsistencies with the interface, and I experienced one point when the application said my connection had been lost, and along with it, my changes - oddly, I didn't actually lose any changes, but regardless, that's not a good sign. I wouldn't use it for anything work-related honestly, but I will say it makes a decent home word processor and spreadsheet suite. I like the collaboration and sharing tools; they're simple but effective. Revision control is a very nice feature as well; being a developer and used to using revision control when programming, I'm glad to see it catching on in other areas.
I uploaded some files by email, both in the body of the email (which works very smoothly, but takes a while to process), and as attachments (takes an extremely long time to process, and I ran into some problems, which I was able to resolve by searching the Google Group dedicated to the application.) I also tried editing and creating new documents through the web interface. I uploaded spreadsheets and text documents by email and by upload form, and created a new one of each via the web interface. Everything worked well, but there are some inconsistencies between the two applications (such as the way documents are renamed), and the interface for Spreadsheets can be irritating, as you have to switch between tabs to switch between formatting and data entry/formula editing. I don't know how many spreadsheet functions it supports, but probably not many - this might present some difficulties when importing more complex spreadsheets, so I wouldn't recommend it.
On the whole, however, it is an application I will continue to use for my personal use going forward, and for some documents I need to collaborate on for work purposes, that aren't mission-critical or highly confidential.
On to Picasa Web Albums. This works extremely well. There are a couple of minor bugs with the (again, beta) Picassa 2 software with the Web Albums upgrade. I already had and have used Picassa 2, but I had to download and install the new version seperately (no auto-update as Gtalk has.) There are some minor glitches with the upgrade that are unrelated to the web album feature - UI glitches with scrolling, for example - but the web album works quite well. You select your photos, click a button, give the album a title and description, and it resizes and uploads the photos to your free 250M of storage. For $25 per year you can upgrade to 6G of storage, plus the ability to post video.
You can re-caption, re-name, and reorganize photos via the web interface, and you can add to existing albums from within Picasa. The web page also gives convenient links to email your friends from your Gmail account, and the links are fairly easy to remember (it's basically your Gmail address). It also accepts uploads from Apple's iPhoto.
This is something I will definitely be using going forward, because I share a lot of photos to keep in touch with friends and family across the country. I would recommend it as a photo-sharing service, but it is not a social networking site; you are only intended to find someone's web album if they tell you about it. They do, however, offer methods of embedding your photo feed into your blog or (shudder) MySpace page.
Now, this got me thinking on everybody's favorite debate: What's next for Google? Well, they just announced they want to slow down on new product development, and spend more time refining their existing offerings and integrating them together. This is what Google Docs & Spreadsheets is about, and we're going to see more of that. Web albums was a simple matter of leveraging their existing technologies; we're going to see more of that, too.
I also see a few holes in their big push areas. They've got many-to-many text (Google Groups), one-to-one text (Gmail), live one-to-one text (Gtalk), one-to-many text (Blogger), and live one-to-one audio (Gtalk Voice Chat). I see live many-to-many text (chatrooms built onto Gtalk), live many-to-many audio (Gtalk conference calls), and possibly live one-to-one video (Gtalk video chat) on the horizon, easily. The reason I say possibly on one-to-one video as it's still not hugely popular, and it still doesn't work very well. However, Google is known for changing those traits in everything they touch, so they may be able to pull something out of their PhD-lined hat.
That's everybody's communications. They're also taking care of everybody's media, with Google Video and a recent YouTube acquisition, and of course Picasa and the new Web albums. What's missing is, of course, audio. I see an appeal to independent artists, and possibly another grab of public domain material (like their recent indexing of all books whose copyright had expired). I can definitely see an acquisition in this space, and I particularly like the idea of Last.fm coming under Google's wing. I think it'd be a really good matchup, and I think it'd do great things for both companies. But, of course, this is all conjecture - only time will tell what Big G has planned.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)